It was about a year ago that we installed a new sound mixer at church. The old one had served well for over two decades but there were a number of bits that weren’t working reliably (like pre-fade listen on the first 6 channels, including the ones used for vocal mics) and, as more things began to fail, it was agreed that an upgrade would be a more sensible route than trying to get it all fixed and limping on for another year or two.
Our choice was a Soundcraft ui24R. Going for a digital mixer was a pretty easy choice. Research I’d done a couple of years earlier suggested that, even then, it what what all the companies offering church installations were going for and it would greatly increase our facilities at minimal or even reduced cost. Going for a headless unit and forgoing the array of knobs and sliders for each channel was a bigger step but, having used a similar device from Allen and Heath a few months previous, it wasn’t such a stretch. It would take no more space and, even combined with a large screen touch interface, was much less expensive than a more traditional looking unit and with less moving parts to go wrong.
Why that particular make and model? It was a combination of the facilities, the overall cost, a little bit of familiarity and also that I couldn’t find anywhere able to offer one of the Allen and Heath ones without at least a 3 three month lead time. One year on, and I am increasingly confident that it was a decent call. In the next few posts on this blog, I want to document what it offers, what I’ve loved about it, a few things that have been less ideal and finally some thoughts on what else we might try with it in the year ahead.
Posts will go up as I write them and then I will probably go back and edit them so readers can easily hop between the set.
